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The Philosophers' Magazine BlogTue, 03 Mar 2015 13:57:06 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Comment on Robo Responsibility by Dennis Sceviourhttp://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8415#comment-1187866
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 13:57:06 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8415#comment-1187866Hart and Honore’s superstitious theory “X can be seen as the cause of Y if Y would not have happened but for X” can be reduced to “Bad luck can be seen as the cause of the accident if the accident would not have happened but for Bad luck.” This does not seem to accomplish very much. Has there ever been a satisfactory answer in philosophy for finding responsibility for good fortune and bad luck?

Some ideas on liability for passengers in robotic vehicles can be borrowed from Maritime Law. Steamship Lines are held responsible for the safety of passengers. There need be no Captains responsibility since Maritime liability for passengers covers hazardous weather, piracy and war. Ship builders are not usually held liable for bad luck. If the robotic vehicle is chartered then the liability falls on the licensed charter.

If a single person purchases and uses a robotic vehicle then, who is responsible for the accident? As Mike LaBossiere concludes, it appears the individual is responsible even if manual control of the vehicle is not available.

]]>Comment on Robo Responsibility by Ron Murphyhttp://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8415#comment-1186820
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 21:46:18 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8415#comment-1186820Autonomous systems, in the conventional sense, are just more complex systems than non-autonomous ones. The degree of autonomy ranges:

None – for an inert object such as a rock or piece of metal.

A little – for something like a plan that can autonomously direct itself toward the sun.

A little – for a clockwork toy.

A bit more – for an automatic vacuum cleaner / cat amusement ride.

A lot – Goggle car, Asimo, …

A real lot – Mammals of various kinds.

The most, so far – Humans.

Autonomy is only a measure of how localised decision making capacity is, in location, time, amount (power), adaptability, and any other measures one might seem fitting. If we take a mechanistic view of humans, then we are at one end of this scale (based on current experience, not on maximum autonomy, unless we are the most autonomous systems).

So far, it’s been easy to categorise the last, humans, as independent intelligent agents, and have historically perceived ourselves as so different in kind that our autonomy includes features like the mysterious free will, minds, souls. With hindsight this now looks at least suspect and for many, wrong headed.

With regard to ‘responsible’ autonomous systems, we still apply that mostly to ourselves. Any of the lesser autonomous systems above are seen less responsible the ‘simpler’ they are. But we can still use the language of autonomy, and are temped to do so, when identifying the cause of an accident.

If a car’s brakes fail unexpectedly, the car is at fault and is removed from the road to prevent further harm. Though if it can be shown that a more ‘intelligent’ autonomous system is the cause of the brake failure – the neglect of the owner, or the maintainer – then more onerous responsibility may be attributed.

If we are going to go that far then we need first some way to measure and determine when such responsibility applies to a ‘robot’. But then, having made such an attribution we ought to be fair and give such a robot all the benefits of being a ‘person’: right to a defence, innocent until proven guilty, etc.

]]>Comment on Authenticity & Originality by Authenticity & Originality | just to share @23http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1707#comment-1186735
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 20:16:33 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1707#comment-1186735[…] http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=1707 […]
]]>Comment on Spinoza, Self Help and Agency by Kevin Hendersonhttp://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1186579
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 17:42:03 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1186579Freedom and agency are locked together. If we could all live as long as we wanted or run as fast as light, then our desires, all of them, would begin to turn to rain, by analogy, not feelings.

Consider an arbitrary goal to happiness: if I move one millimeter to the right my life will feel complete, I will have felt I have accomplished all that I needed. It takes me no effort to move my whole body 1 mm to the right. I am free to do this and it is trivially easy. However, because I know this and I am also linked to a biology that creates immensely more interesting, complex, and energy intensive desires, moving 1 mm to the right will not give me immense happiness (in general), nor will running a mile in five and a half minutes, when I used to be able to run much faster.

]]>Comment on Spinoza, Self Help and Agency by Vinahttp://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1186322
Mon, 02 Mar 2015 14:01:25 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1186322A lot goes on below the level of our awareness. What the DNA does,how it makes possible such complex and varied processes as growth, reproduction, immune response, and brain function would take years of schooling for us to understand, or to master. It is just as well that we are not burdened with free will for our physical lives; we would not know where to begin. Evolutionary psychologists tend to perceive our psychic selves as similarly taken care of by nature. Pinker has written about the better angels of our nature, of which another author has said: “the statistics would add up if the two world wars were left out.”

Early Christian writers perceived emotions as a form of thought, some of which were classified demonic.
Although no one is considered to be responsible for these emotions/thoughts arising, if identified with they could lead to dire consequences. The same was perceived as true for what was considered fiendish activity, an inordinate amount of worldly activity beyond what is balanced or normal.

Most, if not all, religions, from East to West, place humanity psychically in the middle of this dilemma. Choose the better angels of our nature, or be chosen to act either demonically or fiendishly. Evolutionary psychologists would disagree, perceiving psychic life as automatic as is physical life. All we have to do is go along for the ride.

Spinoza is likeable for many reasons, however his choosing determinism, seeing humanity as an automaton is puzzling. It is likely that his pantheism, without transcendence, made choosing determinism inevitable, unlike Emerson who choose both pantheism and transcendence, and consequently did not have to reject either idealism or free will. If non-locality, which according to physicists indicates that the fundamentals of nature are elsewhere, turns out to be valid, then science would concur with Emerson.

“What intellectual and moral courage it must have taken for a man from a closed Jewish community to face such mob rejection and stupidity, long before heretics could become media super-stars as at times they do today!”

Yes, to a certain extent. But Spinoza is in 17th century Holland. In terms of being liberal and tolerant, the Dutch were literally centuries ahead of the rest of Europe. In other countries, Spinoza would have been stopped before he got started. Leaving his community would not have been an option. Media was heavily suppressed throughout nearly all of Europe, which provided the Dutch will a wonderful business opportunity. They printed the books that were banned, which tends to make the public even more hungry for the texts. Unfortunately, they would neglect to pay the authors. But if they did, the authors would have become very wealthy, if their books became popular while they were alive.

Often when we think of the past, we think of a progression from illiberal censoriousness to a freer and more tolerant world. But how would Spinoza faire in contemporary Israel. If he stuck to apolitical theological musings, he’d likely be fine. But radicals have irresistible urge to ask the questions that should not be asked, and speak truths that are not to be spoken. It might not be long before he found himself getting a visit from the goon squad of the military censor. He may then have a few options available to him; completely shut up and concentrate on his lens grinding…….accept a little editing here and there, which they do directly at the printers anyhow…………or, flee…. to liberal Holland.

Spinoza’s thesis of determinism is absolute, but it is not a counsel of despair. It allows for self-help and agency despite denying free will insofar as this concept is generally understood and treasured.

For Spinoza “the mind is the idea of the body”, and since mind and body are two aspects of a single substance, any state of mind is to be identified with a state of the body. For Spinoza mind is not caused by the body: mind is a natural, non-physical property and power, and any mental state is a mode of that property but also an idea of a corresponding body state. We might liken these aspects to the east and west aspects of a house, although for Spinoza no ‘house’ or third thing having aspects underlies the aspects. Much more on this in my Ph.D. Thesis ‘A Perspective on the Mind-Body Problem, with Particular Reference to the Philosophy of Spinoza’ http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/1143/

So what are the body functions with integrated mental states which preclude free will, but allow self-help and agency? Put simplistically, they are nature and nurture; genetics and environmental forces. There are limits to the body states an individual can embody or experience. Thus there are limits to the course of action an individual can effect.

The genetic function is easy to grasp. I am hopeless at ball games; I just don’t have the necessary physical co-ordination. The environmental function is helpfully likened by John Searle in Minds, Brains and Science to the effects of hypnotism. We think we are free but are “in the grip of post-hypnotic suggestion.” Others can often observe this in us: we think we are deciding and acting freely, but they can tell we are on auto-pilot due to environmental conditioning and accepting of opinion and partially understood experience. Examples of this may be religious conviction or always having a cup of tea before bed.

In Spinozistic terms the agency and self-help we have is bound up in reason and knowledge of our own individual nature. This is a counsel of untold helpfulness. Only by submitting our behaviour to analysis; weighing up the forces operating on us and judging which will serve best in any situation, can help us to be aware of environmental forces working in us, and override the unsuitable responses we know are implanted in us.

s.wallerstein –

The depiction of Spinoza heading Mike’s blog relates well to Spinoza’s own struggle with agency and self-help. The remarkable analytic faculty which made him unable to deny the errors and inconsistencies in Jewish dogma heritage and in physical science could not always override the conditioning of spirituality and passion of his Jewish-Iberian conditioning. In his final illness-plagued years the battle between the mysticism of Ethics Part 5, the passionate denunciation of current theological and political issues and the continued wish to live solely through reason were all pre-determined. But choices between acting on these powerful internal forces remained.

]]>Comment on Spinoza, Self Help and Agency by s. wallersteinhttp://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1181665
Sat, 28 Feb 2015 01:11:02 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1181665More than the courage to face assassination attempts, I admire the courage that enabled Spinoza, in the name of a naturalistic account of reality, to live completely cut off, due to the excommunication decree, from the world of his childhood, from the Jewish community he had grown up in, from his childhood friends, from other family members.

He must have been extraordinarily lonely, all of that before there were Facebook groups for heretics and “Kiss me, I’m a Heretic” teeshirts and coffee mugs as there are today.

]]>Comment on Spinoza, Self Help and Agency by Mike LaBossierehttp://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1181420
Fri, 27 Feb 2015 22:07:21 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1181420Oh, you were just determined to be nihilistic and stop.
]]>Comment on Spinoza, Self Help and Agency by Mike LaBossierehttp://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1181417
Fri, 27 Feb 2015 22:06:39 +0000http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=8410#comment-1181417S.Wallerstein,

He certainly faced challenges that would have defeated a lesser person. My students are always impressed that he survived an assassination attempt-but, they probably are picturing something from Assassin’s Creed.